MP asks Government to ensure balanced development

Accra, July 24, GNA - A member of the legislature, Mr Rashid Pelpuo on Tuesday underscored the need for government to fully harness and exploit the country's human resource and ensure balanced development of constituencies.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on development projects in the Wa Central Constituency, Mr Pelpuo said there should be an equal distribution of projects to reduce the level of deprivation in some of the constituencies.

The Wa Central MP expressed his appreciation to the constituency for their commitment and resilience to improve their living conditions. He however, called for more support from government as an implementer of policies to skew its development projects to the constituency to march with other constituencies and appealed for the support of the people to achieve his development agenda. Mr. Pelpuo said the improvement of development infrastructure like markets, roads, hospitals and educational facilities would attract more skilled personnel and investors into the constituency and further to the Upper West Region, which was Ghana's youngest administrative region, created in 1983.

The MP said the development of the human resource in the constituency was his focus and regretted that only two people from the constituency were medical doctors with very few nurses hailing from the area.

He said he had therefore launched a scholarship scheme under which he would sponsor brilliant but needy pupils who qualified to the universities as well as sponsor students into the medical school. He added that he had so far spent an amount of more than 280 million cedis on 62 students to the universities including four who are reading medicine at various Ghanaian universities. Mr Pelpuo said through his assistance nine students had gain admission into the nursing training college. He outlined his contribution to the improvement of various schools in the constituency, especially Wa Islamic Senior Secondary, TI Ahmadiya Secondary School, Fongo Local Authority, Fongo English/Arabic, Catholic Junior Secondary Schools and the Ahmadiya Day Nursery. He said he had also bought 20,000 textbooks from the United State of America and donated them to the Wa Regional Library and some selected Senior Secondary Schools in the constituency. Additionally, Mr Pelpuo said he had spent an amount of 75 million cedis to organize annual mock exams for all Junior Secondary Schools in the Wa Municipality.

The MP spoke on the tourism potential of the constituency and said he had renovated the Jenjen Crocodile Pond. "This pond had never dried up, it saved the Wala people from thirst and I am providing a fencing around it. "I am also working to make the grave yard of our eminent citizens more aesthetic because this place has some spiritual values to us and people who visit there," he said. Through his instrumentality, the Wa-Na Palace with its unique architecture is also being rehabilitated. Mr. Pelpuo said he had also built a shed in the Zongo market and another in the slaughterhouse to protect the people from the scorching sun.

The MP appealed for support to improve sanitation in the area and called on the assembly to co-operate more with him to properly manage toilet and other sanitary facilities. He expressed confidence in his people adding, "I am really in touch with the constituents and I want to leave a mark and not just as a passing MP."